Getting Organized To Organize Your Life

SPENT - YOUR SHOPPING SOURCE

January 18, 2001|By KORKY VANN; Special to The Courant

OK, put down that doughnut and admit it. Along with vowing to lose weight and exercise more, one of your New Year's resolutions was to get organized. Instead, your closet is still a mess, the pages of your brand-new calendar are blank and your desk is heaped higher than a landfill.

Looks like 2001 is going to be another year of rushing to the store for a gift on the day of your mother-in-law's birthday, returning from the grocery store only to remember what you forgot and realizing at midnight that your Visa bill was due today.

Reality bites. Experts say resolutions are easy to make, but hard to keep -- which is why most of them go flat almost as fast as holiday champagne. But the truth is, failure is not a foregone conclusion. To really make changes, you have to set realistic goals and find the tools to help you set them in place.

In other words, don't expect miracles. The process of clearing away clutter, for example, whether from your home or your life, takes time, says Linda Breen Pierce, author of ``Choosing Simplicity: Real People Finding Peace and Fulfillment in a Complex World.''

Pierce suggests taking 30 minutes each day for quiet reflection, clearing your physical space (such as your desk or counter) before starting projects, and focusing on one thing at a time.

``Organizing your physical environment and your activities is a part of simplifying your life,'' says Pierce. ``One doesn't come before the other; they are both part of one lifelong journey.''

If you were hoping for results sooner than that, check out The Family Organizer, a spiral-bound calendar designed to help families stay organized. Created by Amy Knapp, the organizer's 2001 calendar features places for grocery lists (perforated for taking to the store), to-do lists and menu planning, and even a growth-and- gratitude area for recording personal accomplishments and blessings. Also included are color-coded stickers to highlight red-letter days. (Order the Organizer at www.thefamilyorganizer.com or at www.amazon.com.)

Sometimes, getting organized depends on knowing the answers to the challenges of everyday life. ``How To Do Just About Anything: 1,001 Easy to-follow, Step-by-Step Instructions from the Web's Most Comprehensive Source of Practical Information,'' by Courtney Rosen, will help.

The book is the first off-line venture from eHow, a Web site that provides information on how to accomplish more than 15,000 tasks. To date, more than a million visitors have accessed the site, which was ranked by Nielsen/Net Ratings as one of the top 10 news and information sites on the Internet.

For the resolution-impaired, Rosen and editors at eHow offer the lowdown on how everything from the financial (``How To Get Rich, Or -- More Practically -- How To Live Within Your Means'') to the physical (``How To Lose Weight'') to the practical, (``How To Negotiate an Employment Contract''). Under ``How To Get Organized,'' they suggest:

Survey your belongings: What do you have? How do you store it. Keep things you use frequently in easily accessible places.

Set up a box for items that need repair.

Create a file for documents such as insurance policies, credit reports, Social Security cards, etc. Develop a finance file for unpaid bills, bank statements and income tax papers.

Carry a complete address book, taking care to keep it updated. Electronic organizers (such as Wizards or Palm Pilots) can also be very convenient.

Create consistent, regular "systems" for who will do what and when. Assign certain days for paying bills.

Keep ongoing lists of books to read, movies to see, restaurants to try and gifts to buy.